


Gallifrey

by SaltAndSmoke



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crying, Despair, Dreams, F/M, Feels, Gallifrey, Loss, Love, Men Crying, Nightmares, Oneshot, Sad, Sadness, ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 14:43:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4483298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltAndSmoke/pseuds/SaltAndSmoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor wakes up in his TARDIS. He instantly feels that something is different, yet he can't say what it is. As he gets up to take a look outside he finds himself confronted with the most impossible scenario...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gallifrey

**Author's Note:**

> This is a One Shot I did...uhhh...ages ago. But only now did I find the time to translate it into english so more of you can read it (and it might get more credits). I am very sorry, for this is probably one of the most depressing things I have ever written. It feels wrong wishing you fun reading it but...ahh whatever. It's Tenrose, even though I don't really ship them, it's one of those weird ships you don't really support but cannot ignore because they are too important for the canon narrative.

He opened his eyes.  
Something was different. He could feel it.  
The dim light falling through the small window in the door of the TARDIS made the console shimmer orange. The ships' door stood open a tiny bit, just enough for a familiar smell to find its way inside. 

The Doctor blinked. He knew this smell but that was impossible. It was impossible that he would be able to smell it, here or elsewhere.   
Carefully he sat up. What had happened in the first place? He couldn´t remember a thing.  
He grabbed a post and dragged himself onto his feet, leaned into the wall. Then, he looked at the door.  
The orange light seemed brighter than before. What was outside there?  
Something told him he didn´t want to know it but at the same time the light seemed to attract him, call him.

He squared his shoulders and started to head to the door, slowly at first, then faster and faster, almost running. The smell became stronger, the closer he got and with it, memories awoke. Painful, beautiful memories.   
He grabbed the door handle and opened the door.

 

The orange light flooded into the control room of the TARDIS, illuminating every corner and bathing The Doctor, standing in the door frame, motionless, blinded  
The smell had become a lot stronger, bringing back more and more memories from the depths of his soul and making The Doctor tremble.  
He had come home.

But that was impossible. It couldn´t be.  
Gallifrey was gone. Fallen, destroyed together with every living being that had been on it. His home planet did not exist anymore. How could he be standing here, then? 

A warm breeze ran through The Doctors hair, loosening single strands and whispering in his ears as if it wanted to welcome him. He blinked and as his eyes got used to the light, he SAW.

The small, yellow sun stood high in the south, its bigger, red sister was still hiding behind the mountains at this time of the day; under a burnt orange sky a steppe of deep red grass seemed to spread in every direction, endlessly; the breeze stroke over the grass blades and made the plain look like a calm, dark red colored sea with tiny waves rippling over its surface as the strands of grass waved and shone in the light of the small sun.  
In the east the hilly landscape met the slopes of mountains, the summits uncovered by clouds, gleaming in glistening white

As The Doctor turned around, he noticed that the TARDIS had landed on the edge of a copse. Above his head, the wind whispered in silver, pinnate leaves and while he was looking up, one of them came off and glided down towards him. He reached out and the leaf landed on his palm, lighter than a feather and as cool as water.   
Astonished, he ran his fingers over it, held it against the light, admiring how the sunbeams, refracted on the veined surface, made the leaf shimmer.   
And as he lifted his gaze, he saw it.  
The citadel.

It rose on his right hand side, up, up, all the way up into the sky, nearly three thousand feet tall, like a gigantic, black stone needle under a vitreous dome, standing out against the flat line of the horizon. The gargantuan cupola refracted the light, making the glass gleam blueish. 

The Doctor knew that the capitol of the Time Lords was much bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. When he closed his eyes he could see the stone arches, seemingly never ending, neither in heighth nor in length, fading away and disappearing into darkness on either side, radiating power and eternity. He could see the marbled floor of the citadel on which the history of the universe was banned, its dawn engraved on the cold stone plates, its final breathes lying somewhere in the dark, yet to come.  
The citadel had once counted as the greatest wonder of Gallifrey, every Time Lord had to have visited it at least once in their lives. But it had perished like the golden springs, the crystal caves and the time-quick-sand, like every other city, every field and every hill, every man, every woman and every child. They all had gone, together with the whole planet. Burned.  
Irretrivable. 

Something wet dropped onto the leaf in his hand and The Doctor was puzzled to notice that he was crying.  
He had completely forgotten about the beauty of this place, had been suppressing the memory of it for ages to protect himself from the pain it caused.   
And now here he stood.

This was the moment he recognized the figure on the hill.  
She stood less than a thousand feet away, her back turned on him, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders and swinging in the breeze.

 

The Doctor squinted. He knew her. He knew this figure but it was impossible for her to be here, more impossible than anything else. She should have suffocated by now, for the air here consisted of far too little oxygen for her lungs.  
But apart from that she just couldn't be here. Never.   
She was gone, forever. It was against all odds that she could have been able to escape the parallel universe and even if she had found a way, how could she have landed on a planet that had ceased to exist so long ago?

And still, there she was. Almost with in his grasp. And his two stupid hearts started to beat faster. Hope was something hideous.

„Rose?“

He whispered. She did not turn around. He took a step towards her.

„Rose.“

This time, he raised his voice.

The figure flinched. Then, she turned her head.  
Rose looked at him with big, brown eyes that reflected the red sun that was just crawling over the summits of the mountains. Strands of her blond hair danced around her face. She smiled, beamed with happiness.  
She looked exactly the way he remembered her; probably even a bit more beautiful.

He couldn't breathe. His hearts were in his mouth, pumping blood through his body at a speed that made him feel giddy. 

„Rose!“

He started to run.  
Suddenly, something strange happened. The distance between him and Rose did not grow smaller but instead, the red grass plain seemed to grow larger, vaster the faster he ran.  
Rose veered away from him, more and more.  
The expression on her face changed. The smile vanished, her eyes first flashed with confusion, then panic.  
She started to run now, too, reaching out for him, shouting something  
No sound escaped from her lips but he did not need to hear her. He could read what she screamed. One word. Over and over again.  
Doctor!

He felt how his legs grew heavier, his lungs burnt and his hearts filled with despair but he couldn't stop. He kept on running, stumbled over unevennesses on the ground, roaring her name, and watched her drifting away from him. Watched how he lost her with every step a bit more. Again.

His foot got caught by something, a root, a stone, he lost his balance and crashed to the ground.  
He wanted to get up again and continue running, but when he lifted his head, he froze.

She was gone.

Rose Tyler was gone.

Where she had been, stretched the gallifreyan grass plains beneath the burnt orange sky. The two suns stood high up in that sky, indifferently, looking down upon the world that shouldn't be, burning the last Time Lord in their yellow-and-red light.

He didn't need to turn around to know that the copes was still directly behind him. He could sense the presence of the TARDIS, less than ten meters away. He hadn't moved a step forward and yet felt as if he had been running for hours.  
He started to cry. Dug his fingers into the moist, black earth, searched for footing, tore out the grass by its pale roots, sobbed weakly, screamed her name out into his world, howled his agony into the wind.

His voice trailed off into the distance, unheard. His despair left the planet cold.

He collapsed, shook, covered his face with his hands.

Then, he opened his eyes.  
He was lying in his bed. The fabric of his clothes and the stench of cold sweat were clinging to his skin, his face was wet.

He felt exhausted, drained. The tiny piece of sky he could see through his window wasn't orange any more. A single sun shone before a light blue background.

He rubbed his face in his hands. His skin was ice cold and sticky to the touch and his eyes itched. He sighed and stared at the rear wall.

 

Actually, he should have known it. It had been too good to be true. He was in the possession of a brilliant mind, why didn't he notice that it had been a dream?  
A very realistic dream, admittedly, but a dream nonetheless.

He could answer the question himself: Because he had been hoping. Hoping with all his strength that it could be real, no matter how impossible and absurd it was.  
Hope was stronger than mind.

He wondered when it would stop. The dreams. When he wouldn't see Rose any more, when she would be vanished from his dreams and thoughts and hearts forevermore. When she would stop hurting him.  
It could take centuries, millenia, eons. But someday it was going to happen. Time healed all wounds, it was said. Probably, that was a lie. 

Gallifrey had fallen a long time ago and still no day passed without the loss paining him.  
Probably that saying only applied to mortal life forms, creatures with a finite life span. 

He had lost everything and night after night after night, he deserted Rose. But the worst thing was, that he feared the night when she wouldn't come to haunt him in his dreams any more. When he would have forgotten her blond hair and her smile, her brown eyes and her voice.  
He feared the day he wouldn't be able to remember the burnt orange color of his home planet's sky and the way the massive glass domes reflected the light.  
Since only then he would have really lost everything. Only when he couldn't remember any more.

The Doctor sat up, grabbed his pinstripe suit and his trench coat that were both hanging over a chair and got up.  
It was time to move on.


End file.
